Moon Flights

Judgment

“That’s odd,” Ker said, picking up the egg-shaped rock. “I never saw a rock shaped like an egg before.” It was heavy, like any rock, cool in his hand. Smoother than any rock he’d ever seen.

“You find rocks like that in the hills west of here, lad,” Tam said. He sounded as if he’d seen many such rocks before. “Someone dropped it,” he said, looking around as if he expected to see that someone. “Gnome. Dwarf. Rockfolk would have something like that. And what’d they be doing here, I wonder? Never saw them this near the village; they need rocky hills to live in.”

“They wouldn’t drop it, not they.” Ker turned the rock, rubbing it with his thumb. Stories said the rockfolk had grasping hands that never let go what they held. “It’s smoother than most rocks anyway. Like someone’d polished it.”

“Carried in a pocket with a hole in it. A sack—”

“I reckon as it belongs to someone, then,” Ker said, putting the rock back on the path. “Best leave it be.”

“For someone to stub a toe on in the dark?” Tam picked it up, hefted it, ran a calloused thumb over the smooth surface. “You’re right, lad, it is smooth.” He put it down just off the path, near a brambleberry tangle. “Now no one’ll kick it in the dark and call a curse on us for leaving a tripstone, but it’s easy enough to find, if whoever dropped it recalls what way they came.”

Ker nodded and walked on, down past the brambleberry tangle, taking the steps made by its roots and those of the yellowwood thicket, steps worn into hollows by the feet of those who went daily from the creek up to the cow meadows and back. Under his bare feet the warm earth turned cool, and then chill and damp as he neared the stream.

Tam followed; Ker could hear Tam’s slower, more careful footfalls, the slight grunt as he came down the slope. Caution was in Tam’s movements, in his words, as was proper for an older man, an Elder in the vill. Ker would not have worried about someone tripping on a rock in the path at night, though now Tam mentioned it, he knew he should worry. Others than humans used that path; the first humans here had found it bitten deep into the land, so that now the bushes and thickets towered over it, and here near the creek he walked between walls of fern and flowers. The people of light used it, and the people of shadow, singers and unsingers, and the people of earth, those of the law and those of the forge. A curse from any of these might bring desolation to humans within its reach, and the curses of the Elders reached a long way.

Just beyond the old way marker, put there by no human hands in ancient times, he saw another of the odd egg-shaped rocks in the path. He made the sign to avert a curse. The rock remained. He stopped.

“Go on,” said Tam from behind him, touching his shoulder.

“It’s another one,” Ker said.

“Another one what? Oh.” Tam edged past Ker. “It’s not the same color.”

Ker had not noticed that; he had seen the shape only. Now he could not remember just what color the other one was. Stone colored, or he’d have noticed, but what color was stone? His mind threw up images of gray stone and brown, black stone and reddish yellow. This one was pale gray, speckled with dark.

“What if it is eggs?” he asked. “What if something lays stone eggs?”

Tam laughed, a harsh barking laugh. “What—you think maybe dwarfwives lay eggs?”

“I didn’t say that.” Ker stepped carefully around the rock. He wasn’t going to pick it up this time. He’d averted a curse, or tried to, but handling things that might be cursed was a good way to catch bad luck anyway. He wished he hadn’t touched the first one. “I only said—we found two. If they are eggs, what laid them?”

“They’re not eggs. They’re rocks.” Tam bent down, picked up the rock, and shifted it from hand to hand. “This one’s a little grayer. Heavier, not by much. Could be it has pretties inside. Some of them egg-shaped rocks over to Blackbone Hill has pretties inside. Gems, or near as need be.”

Ker shivered. Blackbone Hill had a bad reputation, for all that some claimed to bring burning stone and valuable gemstones out of it. Stories were told about what lay under Blackbone Hill, what bones those were. A dragon, some said, had been killed there for his gold, and others said the dragon had died of old age, and still others argued that the dragon had choked on magegold. Tam had always said the stories were fool’s gold, that only rock lay under the grass.

“Was there as a youngling,” Tam went on. Ker knew that; everyone in the vill had heard Tam’s stories of his travels. “A long ways off, and not much worth the trouble, but for his pretties.” He hefted the rock in his hand. “I’ve half a mind to crack this open and see if it’s that kind. Had to trade all the pretties I found at Blackbone for food by the time I’d come home.”

Ker shook his head. “What if it is something’s egg? Bad luck, then, for sure.”

“It’s not an egg. Nothing lays stone eggs.”

Nothing Tam knew of. Ker knew that he himself knew less than Tam, but surely even Tam did not know everything.

“We should ask somebody,” he said, seeing Tam about to crack the rock egg against the old way marker that stood at the foot of the cut. The way marker came from the Elder People; it might be bad luck to break anything on it.

“Ask who?” Tam said.

That was the stopper. Tam knew more than anyone else Ker could think of; he was an Elder, but…

“Somebody,” he said. “The singers, maybe?”

“Finders, keepers,” Tam said, and his arm came down. The egg-shaped rock hit just on the edge of the way marker, and it broke open to show a serried rank of purple and white crystals.

“Pretties,” Tam said with satisfaction. “Just as I thought. Here, Ker—you can have one.” He probed with thick fingers and broke off a single crystal spike, about the length of his finger from knuckle to nail. He held it out.

Ker felt cold sweat break out on his face and neck. He could not refuse a gift from his future father-in-law, not without risking a quarrel, but he didn’t want to touch that thing, whatever it was. He whipped off his neck cloth, and took the crystal in that. “I don’t want to risk breaking it,” he said. It was partly true, but the partial lie made a bad taste in his mouth. For courtesy, he looked closely at the crystal. Cloudy purple, the eight facets glinting in the light, the point narrowing abruptly at the tip… it looked sharp, and he did not test it with his finger. Carefully he folded the cloth around it and tucked it into his shirt, snugging his belt so it wouldn’t fall out.

Tam took off his own neck cloth. “Good idea,” he said. “Best not break the pretties. They’re worth more unbroken.” He wrapped the fragments of the rock, and put them in his shirt. Then he started off, leading the way this time. Ker did not see the next egg-shaped rock until Tam bent over, halfway across the gravelly ford of the creek, and picked it up. He showed it to Ker—this one was greenish-gray, streaked with darker green—before tucking it into his shirt with a grin. “If this’n has pretties too, I’m set for a long time. It’s easy to trade pretties for ’most anything at the Graywood Fair. I’ll pick up the other one tomorrow or the next day.”

No more worries about who might’ve dropped it, Ker noticed. He followed Tam into the village, turning aside to his mother’s house as Tam went straight on to his own. He lifted the hearthstone that guarded their treasures, and laid the pretty beside the armlet of bronze, the bronze pendant with a flower design, the string of glass beads he would give Tam’s daughter the day they were wed, and eight silver bits that would, at his mother’s death, be his inheritance and pay his cottage fee.

Then he went to sit in the village square, holding the staff of his approaching marriage, and endured until nightfall the taunts and teasing of those who tested a bridegroom’s will and temper. It was hard not to respond when Dran’s daughter kissed him full on the lips, or Roder’s son told everyone about the time he had eaten a woods pear so fast he’d bitten a grub in two without noticing it, then thrown up. But this was the way of it. Lin had spent her time sitting in the square and now it was his turn; as he had sat on the judicar’s bench and watched her, so now she sat on the same bench and watched him for any sign of impatience, bad temper, or unfaithfulness.

When full dark had come, and no one more bothered him, he went home and slept as usual until—in the darkest hours of night—he woke with a start, staring about him, bathed in cold sweat. Fragments of a dream swirled through his mind and vanished. Lin’s face. Flame. Darkness. A great roaring that was almost music.

His ears hummed with the noise, as if someone had smacked him in the head with a rock. He tried to lie quietly, breathe slowly, return to sleep, but the humming itched at his ears and quieted only slowly. At last he slept.

In the morning he remembered waking, but nothing of the dream except that it was unpleasant. Today he would again spend the hours until homefaring with Tam, and then sit in the village square in the evening. He rose, fanned the embers of the fire into flame, then fetched water to boil. Lin’s mother, Ila, a guest in this house these five days, opened an eye and watched him, as his mother had guested with Tam for the days of Lin’s testing and watched Lin. Ker measured grain into the pot, adding a pinch of salt from the salt-crock, then he left while the others rose. Tam was just coming out of his house.

“Guardians bless your rising,” Ker said.

Tam grunted. “Guardians should bless my sleep instead. The water boils?”

“It boils,” Ker said.

“Good. I’m hungry.” Tam walked to Ker’s mother’s house, twitching his shoulders as if they hurt. Ker stood beside the door of Tam’s house and waited, stomach growling, until Lin’s little sister brought him a bowl of gruel and a small round of bread, lumpy and hard, the girl’s own baking. Lin’s would be better than this, he knew.

He ate it standing by the door, and the girl came to take away his bowl. He walked over to his mother’s house, and waited until Tam came out, belching, his face red from the heat of the fire.

“Well, now, to work,” Tam said. Today they would join the other men ditching a field near the creek, draining it. All morning Ker hacked at the soggy soil with a blackwood spade, careful not to strain it to the breaking point. Old Ganner, who’d died before Midwinter, had carved the black-wood spade years back, and traded it to Ker’s father for a tanned sheepskin. Ker knew himself lucky to have it. Tam and the other men watched him as much as they worked themselves. No one liked ditching; it was hot, hard, heavy work that drew the back into tight knots, but the blackwood spade cut through the roots better than one of oak or ash.

Shortly after the noon break, Tam beckoned to Ker. Ker scraped the muck off the spade with the side of his foot and went to Tam’s side. “Stay here, lad, and keep working. I’m going to check the cow pastures for us both,” Tam said.

Ker’s head throbbed. He knew what Tam would do. He would try to find that other egg-shaped stone, and break it open for more pretties. His heart sank, stonelike, and he found no words.

“You have the shoulders for digging,” Tam said. “It’s young man’s work.” He grinned and clapped Ker on the shoulder, then turned away.

Ker stabbed the ditch with the spade, more in worry than anger, and the spade groaned. Sorry, he thought to the wood, and stroked the handle. He looked closely at the shaft, but the grain had not split. Blackwood, best wood, supple and strong… blackwood made good bows as well as digging tools. Tam came back in late afternoon, his hands empty and his face drawn into a knot like Ker’s shoulders.

“You didn’t sleep much last night,” he said to Ker.

How had he known? “I had a bad dream,” Ker said.

“You followed a dream out through the dark?” Tam asked.

Ker shook his head, confused. “I didn’t go out,” he said.

“It was gone,” Tam said, not naming it. Ker knew what he meant.

“I did not take it,” Ker said.

Tam shrugged. “Someone did. Rocks don’t walk by themselves.”

“Maybe the one who dropped it,” Ker said.

“Maybe. No matter. I have the other for pretties.” His sideways glance at Ker accused, though he said nothing more.

They went back to the village then, and Ker spent another evening in the square, with Lin on the bench watching him and the young people standing around making jokes. Old Keth, Bari’s mother, came and reminded everyone of the time he had spoiled a pot she was making, bumping her at her work. Lin’s little sister reported that he had slurped his gruel that very morning, gobbling like a wild pig of the forest. He bore it patiently, as Lin had borne it when his mother told that Lin had made a tangle in the weaving.

That night he dreamed again: fire, smoke, Lin’s face, noise. Again he woke struggling against that fear, and again his ears hummed for a time before he could sleep again. In the morning he knew he had had the same dream again, but still remembered nothing of it. That frightened him: To repeat a dream meant something, but he could not interpret a dream he could not remember.

That day he finished the ditch before it was time to sit in the square, and decided to cool off in the creek. Tam was talking to the older men in the shade of the trees. Ker waved, mimed splashing, and walked off to the creek. Upstream from the ford the creek had scooped out a bowl waist deep at this time of year.

Under the trees the sun no longer bit his shoulders, but the air lay still and hot. His feet followed the path as his mind cast itself ahead into the cool water. The scent of damp and fresh growth filled his nose, promising comfort. He came to the ford, where the water scarcely wet the top of his foot, and turned aside to the pool, stripping off his shirt and trews to hang them on the bushes to one side.

He eased into the water, murmuring the thanks appropriate to the merin of the creek, and splashed it over his head and shoulders. Something tickled his heart foot, then the other. Slowly he sank down in the water, crouching, until only his head was out. He had always loved the way the water’s skin looked, seen from just above it like this. Its surface would have looked flat from above, but now, in the wavering reflection of the trees overhead, he could see its true shape, the grain of its flow. On his back, the current’s gentle push, and between his legs the water flowing away downstream, past the village lands, beyond into lands unknown.

He let his eyes close and listened. No sound of breeze in the trees, no leaf rustle. Something moved on a tree trunk; he heard the scritch of claws on bark.

He had known Tam all his life. Cautious Tam, careful Tam, thoughtful Tam, perhaps not as wise as Granna Sofi, but then she was older, deeper in wisdom. Now he wondered if he knew Tam at all. And if he knew too little of Tam, what of his daughter Lin? If Tam could turn grasping, so late in life, would Lin draw back her hand from life-giving? Would she be a fist and not an open hand after all?

He wished his father had lived. He could not talk to his mother about this, not now. She had asked the ritual questions back before Lin sat in the square, and he had said yes, he was sure the Lady’s blessing lay on Lin and on their union. He had been sure.

He was not sure now. He knew only that he woke each night in the darkest hours, after foul dreams, with strange music humming in his head.

He squeezed his eyes shut and sank below the surface. Cool water lifted the strands of his hair, washing away the sweat and grime. Cool water supported him everywhere. If he were a fish, he could live in this cool cleanliness always, in this silence. He opened his eyes underwater and watched tiny silver bubbles from his nose rise past his eyes. Air seeking air, its own kind. He was not waterkind or airkind, neither fish nor bird.

His lungs ached. He lifted slightly, rolling his head back to catch a breath, and blinked the water out of his eyes. Even as he heard a startled hiss, he saw them.

Two squat shapes, half the height of the men but not boys, stood in the shallows staring at him. One muttered at the other, no tongue he knew. Of course not: They were Elders, rockfolk Elders. He knew that from the tales, every detail of which came back to him in that instant. Squat, broad, long-haired, bearded, teeth like stone pegs, hands and feet overlarge for their height. Clothed in leather and metal. Armed with metal weapons. And angry. In the tales, the rockfolk were always angry, usually with a human who invaded their fastnesses or stole something from them.

He was aware of a chill from more than the water, and aware too of his own nakedness. His clothes… one of the rockfolk had them now, stretching and poking at his shirt with a finger he knew would tear it… yes. He heard it rip. That one sniffed at the shirt, and wrinkled a broad nose; it gave a harsh sound that might’ve been a laugh. The other answered in its language.

Then came the sound of someone else brushing through the bushes, crackling leaves underfoot, nearer and nearer. The two rockfolk looked at each other and vanished. His shirt fell to the water’s surface, where the current took and folded it, then slid it downstream, slowly, rumpling over the shallows. Ker lurched forward out of the pool, back to the shallows, and made a grab for it. The wet mass resisted, and he yanked it up just as Tam broke through the bushes and stood on the bank scowling at him.

“Looking for another?” Tam asked.

“No, I was hot,” Ker said. “I was in the pool…”

“You’re not in the pool now. What have you got in that shirt?” Tam sounded almost as angry as the rockfolk had looked.

“Nothing,” Ker said. He held it up, wrung out the water, and spread it. The rent was a hand long, a three-cornered tear.

“Something made that—” Tam came into the ford, looking around as if he expected to find another of the odd rocks, as if one might have fallen through that hole in Ker’s shirt.

“It was the dwarf,” Ker said. “Two rockfolk were on the ford when I came up from the water. One of them had my shirt. Then I heard someone coming, and they were gone. My shirt fell into the water—”

Tam’s eyebrows rose. “Gone? Where?” he asked. “I don’t see any rockfolk.” He looked around, then back at Ker.

“I don’t know,” Ker said. “They just… weren’t there. Maybe it was magic.”

“Maybe there weren’t any rockfolk,” Tam said, his voice hard. “Maybe that’s why I didn’t see them.”

“I saw them,” Ker said. “I came up from the water and they were there, in the ford, with my shirt—one of them poked a hole in it—”

“And you didn’t say anything?”

“No. I couldn’t think—”

“Mmm.” Tam didn’t say more, but Ker suspected he hadn’t believed a word of it. He didn’t know what to say, how to convince Tam that he had seen dwarves, and they had disappeared. “I think I need a soak too, lad,” Tam said. “Best you get back to the village, now, and sit your time.”

Ker nodded and fetched the rest of his clothes from the bush he’d laid them on. He put on the trews and draped his wet shirt on his head. He would have to put it on to enter the village, but it might be drier by the time he’d made it to the clearing. And he’d have to explain that rent to his mother. Would she believe him about the dwarves or would she be like Tam? Perhaps he could tell her simply that the shirt had gotten torn, and nothing more.

His mother turned the shirt in her hands, examining the ripped cloth, seeming to half-listen to his explanation. “I will fix it this evening,” she said. “Don’t worry about it.” Ker felt guilty. Though he was almost sure that not telling everything was not the same as telling something untrue, that almost pricked him like a thorn.

He thought so hard about that, sitting in the square that evening, that he scarcely noticed what anyone said or did. The Elders said that lies ripped the fabric of the community, destroyed the trust between people on which community rested. Between him and his mother stood the not-telling about the rockfolk. Between him and Lin’s family stood the lies Tam had told and Tam’s grasping at what was not his. Like father like daughter, like mother like son. Did he want to be married forever to the daughter of someone like Tam… the daughter of Tam himself?

He stumbled home in the dark finally, more miserable than he had been since his father died, and lay down sure he would not sleep. At least he would not dream if he did not sleep.

Despite himself, he dozed off after a time, and woke to voices whispering in the dark, just out of clear hearing. His heart pounded; he lay still, trying to breathe quietly so that he could hear what they said. Dry voices, evoking the rustle of winter leaves crisped by frost and blown by wind, or the little streaked birds of open grassland in midsummer. The blurred edges of speech sharpened slowly; he could hear more and more… but he could not understand. He shook his head, blinked against the dark, but the voices still spoke words he did not know. Then he heard his own name, clear within the bird-sounds of the voices. Once, and then again, “Ker.” And “Lin” and “Tam” as well.

Blood rushed in his ears; he lost the voices in its rhythmic noise. He shivered, suddenly drenched in sweat and cold. Voices that knew his name when he did not know their speech. That must be the Elders, but which race? The people of light were the Singer’s children; they had singing voices. The people of darkness, once also of the Singer’s tribe, had fallen away but retained their beauty, it was said. The rockfolk spoke loud and deep; the people of the law with almost mincing precision. None of these fit the sound he heard.

He sat up and peered through the dark at the hearthstone. It must be the pretty Tam had given him; that must be what caused this. He must get rid of it. He thought of throwing it in the creek, burying it in the woods.

“Fool!” came the voice, now in his own tongue. “Put it back.”

Back? He tried to remember just where on the path Tam had picked it up—just this side of the waystone, yes—and the voice crackled like a fire as it said “No! Fool! Restore, restore…”

Restore what? How?

Above the hearthstone now, a blue flame danced where no fire had been laid. Behind it, the banked embers of last night’s fire sighed and collapsed with a soft puff of ash; the air chilled again, and the blue flame brightened. Ker could not take his eyes from it. Within it, a tiny shape he could not quite see clearly twisted and turned.

“Put it back together. Every piece. Make whole, make well. Else—” A blast of fear shook him, shattering his concentration, implying every disaster that could come to him and his family, his whole village.

Then it vanished, leaving only a blurry afterimage against the dark, and Ker lay back on his pallet, sweating and shivering, until the first dawnlight crept through the windows. He put the water on and started the porridge as usual. He would have to talk to Tam about this, and he had no idea how to say what he must say.

Tam came out looking even grumpier than the day before. “Guardians bless your rising,” Ker said.

“Guardians should bless my sleep,” Tam said, as he had before. That was not the ritual greeting. Was he also having bad dreams?

“Honored one,” Ker began, then stopped as Tam rounded on him.

“Don’t you start!” he said. “You’re not my son-in-law yet.” He strode off to Ker’s mother’s house before Ker could say anything more.

When Lin’s little sister came out with his bowl of lumpy gruel and piece of bread, she shook her head at him. “Da’s angry with you,” she said. “What did you do wrong?”

“I don’t know,” Ker said. Did Tam still think he had taken that other rock from the brambleberry patch? The only wrong he knew of was keeping the pretty, but Tam had given it to him.

“Yes, you do,” Lin’s sister said, staring at him wide-eyed. “You have a liar’s look. I’ll tell Linnie.”

That was all he needed now, for Lin to believe him untrue. If she didn’t already, if her father had not convinced her.

“I do not know why your father is angry with me,” he said. “That is the truth.”

She shifted from foot to foot, staring at him. “It sounds true, but something is wrong. Da isn’t sleeping well—we’re all tossing and turning and when I asked him what was wrong, he said it was you. You are a thief, he said.”

“A thief! Me?” That accusation bit like an ax blade. “I am no thief. I have taken nothing—” He almost said: It was your father, but stopped himself in time.

“That sounds true,” she said. Now her face changed, crumpling into misery. “But Da—my Dad—he tells the truth.”

Sometimes, Ker thought. Not always. He would not tell the child, though; a child’s trust in a parent was too precious to risk.

“You must have done something wrong,” the child persisted. “Or he wouldn’t be angry with you.”

“I will ask him,” Ker said. “I will find out and make it right.”

“Truly?”

“Truly. You will see.”

“Lin is crying,” the child said, then ducked back inside.

Ker took a long breath of morning air flavored with cooking smells, and struggled to finish his gruel and bread. It would be discourteous, an insult to Lin’s entire family, if he did not finish the food. It lay in his belly like a stone. When he was done, he walked back to his own house and waited for Tam to emerge.

“We have to talk,” Tam said when he came out. His eyes looked red as well as his face. His hard hand on Ker’s arm felt hot as a cooking pot.

“Yes,” Ker said. “We do.” He didn’t resist as Tam pushed him away from the house, toward the woods and then into them. Before Tam could say anything, Ker spoke. “It’s wrong.”

“What?”

“That… thing. That rock. With the pretties. It’s wrong. You have to put it back together, fix it, put it back.”

Tam snorted. “So you can just happen to find it and take it for yourself? Not likely, my lad. That’s just the sort of sneaky lie I’d expect from someone like you.”

“I had a dream,” Ker said, ignoring the insult. “Three nights in a row, and last night I woke and heard voices, and saw a flame on the hearthstone…”

“You didn’t bank the fire right, and it burned through. You’re lazy as well as a liar, Ker. I’ve done my best by you, but you needed a father years ago to teach you right from wrong…”

The unfairness of this stopped Ker’s tongue in his mouth. Tam went on. “It has to stop, Ker. I didn’t say anything because I thought, it’s not his fault, he’s just a boy, he’ll learn. But after that day on the trail… you sneaking back to find more…”

“I wasn’t,” Ker said. He could hear the tension in his own voice.

“Lying to me about your shirt… did you think I couldn’t tell you were lying? Rockfolk tore it, you said, when there were no rockfolk to be seen. You had something in that shirt, something heavy, and when you heard me coming you threw it into deep water. I say it was the other rock. You found something, saw something…” Tam’s voice carried complete conviction; he had convinced himself that it was all Ker’s fault.

“I was hot,” Ker said. He thought, but didn’t say, that he’d been working a lot harder than Tam out in the sun. “I went to cool off in the creek. I saw the rockfolk and then they were gone. That’s all.” Even to himself that sounded sullen and secretive; he saw again in his mind the rockfolk in their leather, their great axes, their sudden disappearance.

“Last year I might’ve believed that, Ker. This year… this year I think you want my daughter and my pretties as well. Maybe my life.”

“Your—Tam, what are you talking about?”

“Sitting outside my house putting a curse on my sleep, and then claiming you have bad dreams—”

“I didn’t—”

“Whispering mean things, putting ugly pictures in my head. That’s not what I want in a son-in-law, a witchy man, an ill-wisher, a doomsayer. I’m taking back my daughter’s troth, and I want that pretty I gave you before I knew about you.”

“But I didn’t do what you think,” Ker said. “It’s the pretties—they send the bad dreams, I’m sure of it. That’s why we need to put it back together, so it will stop doing that, so the village will be safe. That’s what it told me.”

“Pretty rocks don’t give bad dreams,” Tam said. “They don’t talk in the night, or make a man see his children flayed and burning… bad things. Ill-wishers do that. You can’t fool me, Ker, trying to blame all that on a rock. My Ila woke in the night and saw you sitting up by the window—easy enough for you to slide in and out, with your pallet right there.” He made a chopping motion with his hand. “No daughter of mine will marry a man who sends evil dreams. Now—for the last time—give me that pretty I gave you, and understand the troth is broken. You have today to make your peace with your mother, for this evening I will tell the Elders why the troth is broken. It would be best for you if you were gone by then.”

“Gone—?” Ker stared.

“Wake up, boy. Whatever dream of power you had is over. We will not tolerate an ill-wisher in this vill, not while I’m an Elder. If I were not a kind man, forbearing, I would kill you where you stand.”

“But I didn’t—”

“Enough. Come now, and return to me that which is mine.” Tam’s hot, hard hand closed again on Ker’s arm, and dragged him back toward the village and his house. Ker stumbled along, his mind in a whirl of confusion.

The other men had gone out to the fields already, but two children and their mother stared as Tam strode along. Ker kept up now, but Tam still held his arm as if he might try to escape. At Ker’s mother’s house, he heard his mother inside chanting the baking rhyme.

“I can’t go in now,” Ker muttered. Men did not intrude when women were singing the dough up from the trough. Tam must know that. Tam merely grunted, glaring into the distance, and kept his hold on Ker’s arm. Ker sneaked a glance at him. Tam’s face, his ears, his neck, were all as red as if he’d worked all day in the hot sun. Was he fevered, was that the source of his wrong thinking?

When Ker’s mother finished the chant, Tam cleared his throat loudly and called to her. “We men must enter.”

“Come, then,” she said. Tam gave Ker a shove, pushing him through the doorway first.

“What is it?” she asked. She covered the dough with a cloth, and wiped her hands.

“Get the pretty,” Tam said to Ker, then turned to his mother. “I have broken the troth, Rahel,” he said. “My daughter shall not marry your son.”

“Why—what is it? What’s wrong? Ker—?”

“It gives me pain to say this,” Tam said, putting his fist over his heart. “Your son is an ill-wisher.”

“No!” His mother gave him one frantic look, then turned back to Tam, her hands twisting in her skirt. “No, you’re wrong. Not Ker. He’s always been a sweet boy—”

“He lies,” Tam said loudly. “He lied to me. He tried to steal. And he sneaks out at night to lay a curse on my sleep and give me bad dreams.”

“I don’t believe it,” she said. “Not Ker.”

“Three nights I’ve had of broken sleep, and voices whispering, and in the morning he is there to wish me well, with a look on his face that would curdle milk.”

“Ker…?” Again she looked at Ker, her face pale in the dimness.

“Get the pretty, damn you!” Tam roared. He seemed to fill the room.

Ker scrabbled at the stone and pried it up. The pretty looked smaller, dusty, in the room’s dimmer light. He picked it up in bare fingers, and nearly dropped it again—it was so heavy and so very cold. He held it to the light for a moment; in the cloudy center he could almost see something, some tiny writhing shape. Did it really move, or did he imagine it?

“Give it to me,” Tam said. Before Ker could comply, Tam grabbed his hand and forced the fingers open. Tam’s breath whooshed in, and back out on “Ahhhhh…” He took it and put it in his pocket.

“What is that?” asked his mother. “That thing—a rock?”

“Some rocks have pretties inside,” Tam said. “They bring a good price at the fair, pretties do. I found such a rock when your son was with me. I broke it open, and gave him one of the pretties inside, because he was to be my son-in-law, and in token of the care I had for him. That was before I knew about him.”

“I can’t believe what you say,” his mother said.

“It doesn’t matter what you believe,” Tam said. “I will tell the Elders tonight why the troth is broken. I told him, make peace with your family and then leave before that meeting. For I will not have an ill-wisher in this vill.”

“But—surely Ker may tell his story…”

“If he is that foolish, he may. But who would believe a liar and a thief, someone who has put a curse on the sleep of my household? The Elders respect me.”

“Ker, did you lie to Tam? About anything? At any time?” The look in her eyes expected no but though he had lied to Tam he could not lie to his mother.

“When he gave me the pretty, I did not want to touch it,” Ker said. “I was afraid of bad luck. So that is one reason I wrapped it in my neck cloth, and I did not tell him that reason.”

“That’s not what I mean and you know it,” Tam said. “I found you in the creek ford, hunting for more—”

“I was not,” Ker said.

“Spinning that yarn about rockfolk,” Tam said. “As if I couldn’t see with my own eyes that you were alone, scrabbling in the rocks of the ford. No rockfolk upcreek or down, uptrail or down. Did they fly up into the air like birds?”

Ker’s mother looked at him as if he should have the answer. “I don’t know,” he said to her; he knew Tam would not believe him. “They just—weren’t there, after I heard Tam coming.”

“Not a skilled liar,” Tam said. “If you think to make your way as a storyteller, Ker, you must do better than that. But never mind—a self-confessed liar, a thief, an ill-wisher—I am going now, and you may tell your mother whatever ice-stories you wish before nightfall. They will melt by day, as all such do.” He strode out of the house, and the heat of the day went with him.

“Ker, I don’t understand,” his mother said. In her face he saw lines he had never noticed before. “You know that lies are wrong…”

He could not bear it that she would think he was what Tam had said. “Please,” he said. “I did not lie. Let me tell you about it.”

She did not quite shrug, leaning on her work table. Ker told her all about that day—only a few days ago, it was. Finding the first stone, and the second and third, Tam’s actions and his own feeling of dread, his unwillingness to touch the pretty. His nightmares, his awareness of Tam’s unfounded suspicions, and finally—last night—his realization that someone—something—demanded that the broken rock be fitted together again, mended, and then restored to its former location. Tam’s anger this morning, and his accusations, his refusal to believe the rock and its pretties were dangerous.

“It is like a tale out of legend,” she said when he had fallen silent. “Strange rocks and frightening dreams and dwarves that say nothing but disappear when someone else comes. Tam is respected, as he said, a father and Elder, a man with knowledge beyond our fields. You are scarce old enough to wed, and you have admitted lying to him about your reason for not touching the pretty.”

“It wasn’t a lie,” Ker said. “I just didn’t tell him all. And I didn’t steal anything, or curse his sleep. The rock did that.”

“It was a kind of lie,” his mother said. “Not telling the whole truth, and now see what comes of it. He can say truly that you were not always true. As for the rest, I believe you.” She sighed, wiped her hands on her apron, and shook her head. “But will anyone else?”

His heart sank. “Surely they will. They have known me from my birth. They know I tell the truth. They know you. And even if they do not believe me—must I really go? Leave the village?”

“I think you must, Ker. Tam will not give you—nor any of us—peace until you’re gone.” She seemed calmly sure of this.

“They know me,” Ker said again. It seemed impossible that this might make no difference. “Why do you think they will think I’m lying?”

“They know Tam better, or think they do.” His mother picked up a hand-broom and swept the hearth where the ashes had spilled out onto it.

“I have to talk to them myself. It isn’t fair…”

“Fairness is for the gods, Ker. We are not gods, to know for certain what is and is not fair.”

“But if Tam doesn’t put the rock back together, something bad will happen. Not just to him, to Lin and maybe the whole village. They should be warned.” He was sure of it now, sure that his dream was right, that Tam was wrong about more than his own conduct.

His mother sighed. “It’s you should be warned, Ker. You have never seen a shunning; you don’t know… if you talk to them and they side with Tam we will both be shunned away.”

“And if I don’t, and the village burns or the rockfolk come in anger? Will that not be my fault if I have not warned them?”

She sighed again, shaking her head. “It is the cleft stick, and we are fairly in the trap. For you are my son; what they judge you to be, they will judge I have made you. I tell you, Ker, it is never easy for a vill to choose a young man’s story over that of a wise Elder. And it is a hard thing to be thrust out into the world alone at my age.”

As he watched, she began to set in piles all their belongings, and Ker realized she meant to leave… for the smaller pile would fit in the packbasket his father had used to carry fleeces to market or in the basket she herself used to carry sticks or berries or nuts home from the wood.

Slowly at first he moved to help her, thinking ahead to what they would need if they were cast out. Food, clothes, cooking things, tools. Everything he touched brought memories of the one who had made it, and stabbed his heart with the possibility of loss. It must not happen. He must find the words to say, words to convince the others that he was right about the danger. He tried not to let himself think about Lin, about never seeing her again.

When the men came in from work that evening, Ker stood outside his house with his mother. Tam glared at him, even redder of face than in the morning. “I told you—” he began, but Ker interrupted.

“I ask the village Elders to meet,” Ker said, as loudly as Tam. “Tam has a grievance against me, and I have my own words to say, a warning to give.”

The other men looked at each other. For the first time Ker wondered if Tam had said anything to them during the day’s work. How had he explained Ker’s absence?

“After you sit your time?” Beryan asked, glancing at Tam. He was senior of the men in that group.

“No,” Ker and Tam said together.

“I am not sitting my time,” Ker said. “I abide the meeting.”

“Not for long,” Tam said, and strode away to his own house. The other men looked at Ker. He felt the force of their stares, but said nothing.

“At starshine, then,” Beryan said. “Lady’s grace on you, until.” He turned away and the others followed.

Ker’s mother set out a supper that Ker saw included most of the perishables in the larder. He tried to eat, but the food sat uneasily in his stomach. Outside the day waned, and he knew word of something unusual would have spread. He and his mother came out into the dusk and looked up, waiting until the first star appeared.

The oldest men and women in the village had gathered around the well, holding candles; others, he knew from murmurs and shufflings in the dark, hung back in the houses or between them. No one spoke to him. As Ker and his mother walked toward them, the Elders drew back into two wings on either side of the well.

“Guardians bless the hour,” Granna Keth said. Her voice quavered.

“Guardians bless the air that gives breath,” Granna Sofi said.

“Guardians bless the earth that gives grain,” Othrin said. He was eldest of the men.

“Guardians bless the water that gives life,” Ker’s mother said.

“Guardians bless the fire that gives light,” Ker said.

“Lady’s grace,” they all said together.

Then Othrin said, “Tam says he has a grievance against you, Ker, and you have acknowledged such a grievance. As he is elder, he will speak first.”

Tam began at once in a voice thick with anger. His version of events now included a long-festering suspicion that Ker had asked permission to court Lin only because he sought to rob her father… that Ker had always intended to go back and steal the special rocks, that Ker had learned sorcery while wandering in the woods and used it to harm anyone he disliked. A fatherless boy, Tam said, despite the care he and every other man had given him… such boys might easily find a way to learn evil things.

Ker could feel, as if it were a chill wind, the suspicion of the others as Tam blamed him for one mishap after another. Yes, he had been in the field that spring when Malo stepped on a rake, but no one then had blamed him. Malo had left his own rake tines-up and forgotten where he laid it. Yes, he had been at the well when two scuffling boys slipped and one cut his chin on the well-curbing, but their mother had scolded them, not Ker. Now she eyed Ker askance.

By the time his turn came to speak, he felt smothered under the weight of their dislike, their anger. Had they always disliked him? He was no longer sure.

He did his best to tell his own story, straight from first seeing the stones to the uneasy dreams, and his conviction that it was wrong to keep the stones, that they must be returned to their real owner.

“Wrong! Yes, wrong to have an ill-wisher—” Tam burst out. Othrin put out a hand.

“Let the lad say his say,” he said.

Ker said it again, trying to make them understand, but Tam’s obvious anger and certainty drew their attention.

“Liar!” Tam said finally. “I was there. I saw no rockfolk at the ford. The first rock I found was gone, and only you knew where it was.”

“They were there,” Ker said. “Two of them, this high.” His hands sketched their size. “They had my shirt; one of them sniffed at it and poked it and it tore. It is all true, what I told you then. I do not know how they disappeared—how would I know the ways of rockfolk?—but they did. You must believe me—you must put the rocks back, all the pieces together, or something bad will happen.”

“Bad things will happen to a vill with a liar and an ill-wisher in it,” Tam said. “A man who lies about one thing lies about all.” Ker saw heads nodding. “A rock is a rock—look—” He showed the unbroken rock to the elders, who leaned closer; several touched it. A drop of hot wax fell on the rock, and Ker flinched. Tam went on. “It is easy for him to say that bad dreams woke him, but I tell you that he did not sleep because he was putting bad dreams into my sleep. Ill-wishing. There is the bad thing.”

A low mutter of agreement, heads moving from side to side. At the back of the group several women turned their backs on his mother. His heart went cold.

“I did not…” he began, but Othrin held up his hand.

“It is not right that a young man not yet wed should tell the Elders what to do,” he said. “You make threats as if you were a forest lord or city king, but you are a boy we knew from birth. Even if the rockfolk come here, I have no doubt Tam will restore to them their property, if indeed it is their property. They would have no complaint against us. As for the rock, it looks like a rock to me. It is shaped like an egg, but what of that? You all but accuse Tam of stealing and lying, when he is your elder and would have taken you into his family. It is not right.” He looked around the circle of Elders, and they all nodded.

“Go out, Ker, and do not return. You are not of us any longer.” He glanced again at the others, who nodded again. “And your mother as well. Like mother, like son; like son, like mother. Take her with you, liar and ill-wisher.” He turned his back. The others turned their backs, until Ker faced a dark wall of backs. Only Tam still faced him, his red face almost glowing in the dark.

“Drive them out now!” Tam said. “They will ill-wish us all—”

“Not by night,” Othrin said without turning around. “We are not people who would turn a widow and orphan out to face the perils of night, no matter what they did. But be gone by the time the sun’s light strikes the well-cover, Ker. After that, it shall be as Tam wishes.”

Ker and his mother walked back to their house in silence and darkness; the others had all gone inside and barred doors against them.

“Well,” said his mother when they were inside, with their own door barred. She did not light a candle; Ker remembered that their few candles were in the packs already. “We must sleep, and rise early.” Her voice was calm, empty of all emotion.

“Mother—” he began.

She put up her hand. “No. I do not want to talk. I want to remember my life here, before it ends forever.”

That night Ker had no frightening dreams, but woke in the dark before dawn to hear his mother sobbing softly. “I’m sorry,” he said into the darkness.

“It is not your fault,” she said. “Not entirely. I could wish you had not lied even in so small a thing as leaving out one reason for an action. But if you are awake, let us go. I have heard the first bird in the woods, and I want to be long gone by daybreak.”

They rose and felt their way to the bundles packed the day before, unbarred the door, and came out into the fresh smells of a summer night. Overhead the stars still burned, but less bright than in deep night. Ker could see the dark bulks of the other houses, the looming darkness of the wood, and the pale thread of path leading toward the fields. The dust was dew-damp under his feet.

He could not believe he was seeing his home for the last time, but even as he hesitated he heard a cry from Tam’s house up the lane. Light blossomed behind the windows, around the door, and Tam’s angry voice grew louder. Ker took a step back onto the path.

“Come,” his mother said. “Come now.”

Still he hesitated. And then Tam flung open the door of his house—outlined against the light inside—and yelled into the night. “Damned ill-wisher—he’s still here, he’s putting his evil on the village even now—burn him out! Burn him out, I say!”

Up and down the lane Ker saw light appear in windows and doors as men and women snatched up brands from their fires and waved them into bright flames.

“Come on,” his mother said, tugging at his arm. Ker turned and stumbled after her as fast as he could under the load he carried. Behind, he could hear angry voices. As they reached the turn into the first field, he glanced back and saw that the twinkling brands were together in a mass near their house.

“We must go to the hills,” his mother said. They had crossed the ford, stumbling on rocks that seemed to have grown all points in the darkness and now stood among the bushes that edged one of the grazing areas. “My mother’s mother’s people came that way; I will have kin-sibs somewhere in that direction.”

“But it’s the wrong way,” Ker said. “That’s the path the stones were on, that the rockfolk were on. We should stay far away from it and the curse they bore.”

“If we see any stones, we won’t touch them,” his mother said. “And we have none, so the rockfolk—if they were seeking the stones—should not bother us.”

He was not so sure, but they had to go somewhere: They could not just stand here arguing. The smoke from their burning house trailed after them like an evil spirit. He could hear the villagers yelling in the distance; they might pursue. His mother started off and Ker followed, bending under the load as they climbed away from the creek and back onto the trail.

By afternoon they were beyond the vill’s farthest cow pastures; taller hills loomed ahead. The well-trodden path had thinned to a track scarcely wide enough for one. When they came to a little dell with trees arching over a spring, Ker’s mother left the trail and went down to it. She sat down in the shade with a sigh. Her face sagged with weariness. “We will sleep here,” she said. “It has been too long since I walked the day away. Go and find us some firefuel, Ker, while I sing the water.”

Ker shrugged out of the packbasket’s straps and leaned it against a tree. He paused to take a drink from one of the waterskins they had filled the day before, then left everything with his mother and climbed back to the trail and looked around. Back down the trail, a narrow fringe of trees and shrubs they had passed a handspan of sun before. Far in the distance he could just see a smudge of smoke where the village lay. Ahead the woods in the dell widened up the slope to meet the trail ahead. That was closer, and he’d be coming downhill with the load.

He walked up the trail, light-footed now without the load on his back, and turned aside where the scrub met the trail. He found a rocky watercourse, now dry, though the trees overhead indicated water somewhere underground. Tiny ferns decorated cracks in the gray rock. One delicate-petaled pink flower hugged the ground just below that ledge. All the rocks were rough, gray, blocky; none were egg-shaped. Lodged against one of the rocks was a tangle of sticks, all sizes and all dry. He pulled a thong from his pocket and bound them together. Working his way down the dry creek-bed, he found here a branch that he could break over his knee, and there another flood-tangle.

As he neared the dell he heard his mother moving about, but no more singing.

“I’m coming,” he called, just in case.

“Come, then,” she said.

He worked his way slowly toward her, the bulky bundle catching on vines and undergrowth. Just above the spring a rock ledge jutted from the watercourse, flood-worn to smoothness. Here was another tangle of sticks—a quick flood, he thought, must have dropped it before the water could push it over the edge. It looked almost like a house of sticks. Perhaps some animal—? He bent over awkwardly and picked them up. Blackwood, yellowwood, blood oak, silver ash. Odd. He hadn’t seen any blackwood or silver ash uphill. But they burned well; he carried them in one hand as he found a way down and around the ledge into the dell.

After a meager supper of bread wrapped on sticks and cooked over the fire, Ker sat watching the coals as the fire died down. No need to bank the fire; they would be moving on at dawn in the morning. His mother, tired out by the day’s walk, had already fallen asleep, warded from the night’s chill by their blanket. He was tired too, drained by all that had happened. His head dropped forward on his chest, and he dozed.

Pain shocked him awake, stinging blows to his face; he heard his mother cry out and struggled up from sleep to find himself facing a blazing fire and four rockfolk as angry as any in the tales. Two held his mother, and two more confronted him. His cheeks burned with the slaps that had wakened him.

“Where are they?” asked one. His voice could have been rocks grinding together.

Ker blinked sleep out of his eyes. “What?” he asked. Another slap.

“You stink of them,” the dwarf said. “Do not lie. You have held what we seek: Where are they?”

He realized what they meant. “I don’t have them,” he said.

“Who does, then? Where are they?”

He hesitated, and the other one slapped him again. Again his mother cried out. “Don’t hurt her!” Ker said, suddenly as much angry as scared. “She’s my mother—”

“She is not hurt,” the first one said. “She is scared.”

“Ker…” came his mother’s voice.

“Don’t hurt her,” he said again, surprised to hear his own voice deep and firm. “It’s not right.”

“It was not right of you to steal what was not yours,” the dwarf said.

“I didn’t,” Ker said. It was Tam hovered behind his lips, but he stopped himself. Tam had been unjust to him, but he would not help that ill seed grow.

“But you know what we seek. How do you know, if it was not you who took them?”

Ker glanced at his mother. The whites of her eyes glinted; he could not read her expression as the light of leaping flames came and went across it. Which was worse, to betray Tam to the rockfolk, or see his mother frightened… hurt… dead?

Another slap rocked his head, more bruise than sting. “Who?” the dwarf demanded.

“What will you do to that one?” Ker asked. His mouth hurt; he tasted the salt that meant his mouth was bleeding. “It is not for me to bring someone else into trouble.”

“Ha!” The dwarf facing him straightened. Standing upright he was taller than Ker sitting down, but not by much. Firelight glinted on the metal in his harness; he looked strong as a tree. “You invade our lands, steal our patterans for firewood, despoil our spring, and you worry about getting someone else in trouble? You have enough trouble of your own.”

“But the trail is open to all… I thought,” Ker said. “And what is a patteran?”

The dwarf grunted. “The trail, yes. So the treaties ran, from the days the first men came here: The trail is for all, folk of the air and folk of the forest and folk of the rocks. This is not the trail. The trail is there—” a thick finger pointed up-slope. “This is not the trail. You took our patterans—our trail markers—for firewood—”

Ker remembered the curious shape of the “flood drift” he’d found on the rock ledge; his face must have shown that memory because the dwarf nodded sharply. “Yes. Leaving aside the other, that is a thief’s action. And you have polluted this spring—”

“We did not,” Ker said. “My mother sang the blessing.”

The dwarf cocked his head. “Did she now? And does human woman not know that such a blessing sung by a woman must not be heard by a man, and sung by a man must not be heard by a woman?” He looked across at Ker’s mother, now sitting slumped between the other two rockfolk. She said nothing.

“I left so she could sing it—to gather firewood,” Ker said. “I did not hear it.”

“And you took our patteran.”

“I didn’t know it was a marker—a patteran,” Ker said.

“What matters that? You took it. If not for your fire, and your snores, which made you easy to find, we might have gone astray from the path our comrades left for us. But we found you, and you have knowledge we seek. So, human, let us come back to that; if indeed you did not take our treasure, why do you bear its smell? Who took it? Where can this person be found? For if we find it not, and quickly, great peril falls on all this land.”

Ker believed that. Between his dreams and the rockfolk, he believed absolutely in the certainty of some dire fate.

“I will tell you,” he said. “But you must not hurt my mother.”

“That is our business, not yours. Yet I say that it is not our habit to harm human women. Or human men, if they do us no harm.”

With a last glance at his mother, Ker told the story yet again. “I was coming back from the cow pasture with an older man, the father of my betrothed,” Ker said. “I saw a strange rock in the path…” He told about the egg-shaped rocks, about Tam’s reaction to the second and third rock. “He said it was like rocks from Blackbone Hill.”

“Blackbone Hill! Your people travel so far?”

“Most do not, but he had, he said, when he was young. And he had found round rocks with pretty crystals inside, he said, and he wondered if this might be such a one. So he—he broke it on the waystone. It had pretty things inside; he gave me one.”

The dwarf growled something Ker could not understand. Then: “Fool! Idiot! Stupid child of dirt and water! On the way marker! Tell me, is this person accounted a simpleton, one with scant mind?”

“No… he is an Elder.”

The dwarf stared, busy brows raised high. “This man is what you call wise?” Then he scowled. “I do not believe it! No one who has been to Blackbone Hill could fail to know the dangers of such things.”

“He said they fetched a good price at the fair.” Curiosity finally got past fear. “What are they, those rocks?”

“Rocks.” The dwarf turned away and tipped out the packbasket. Pots clattered onto the ground. “Is it in here?”

“No! I gave it back to him,” Ker said. “I told you—” The dwarf paid no attention, pawing through the pile… skeins of wool twisted on wooden knitting needles, his mother’s spare skirt, two aprons, his spare shirt and trews, his winter shoes, last year’s straw rosette from above the fireplace, the jar of bread starter, the jar of lard, the waterskins, the sack of beans. Those hard, stubby fingers probed through the pile, found the bracelet and tossed it aside, found the silver bits and paused.

“Where came these? Did you sell that piece of rock for them?”

“My father,” Ker said. “He had many sheep and sold their fleece; over years, he saved that much.”

“Where is he?”

“Dead,” Ker said. The dwarf grunted.

“Tell me more. This person gave you a piece of the… the broken stone. And you did what with it?”

Ker told the rest, while the dwarf stared at him out of shiny black eyes.

“You put it under the hearthstone? Near a fire?” From the tone, that had been the worst place to put the pretty. Ker nodded.

“And then?”

“I had dreams. Bad dreams.” The dwarf nodded.

“Yes, yes. It is dangerous to put such near fire.”

“But you said it was just a rock,” Ker said. The dwarf grunted again; Ker saw his boots shift a little on the ground. “I don’t understand,” Ker said. “I mean, I understand that if it belongs to you—to the rockfolk—then you must have it back. But why is it dangerous to put it under a hearthstone?”

“You ask too much,” the dwarf said. He looked at the others, and began talking in a language Ker had never heard before. Soon they were arguing—or so it sounded—waving their arms and stamping their feet. Ker wondered if he and his mother might escape unnoticed and glanced across at her, but she was sitting slumped, her head in her hands. The argument died down finally, and the dwarf who had been talking to him turned to him again.

“You have a problem,” the dwarf said. “It is that you have the scent of… of what we seek about you. And you travel on the Way. And you have nedross words.”

“Nedross?”

“Rock is dross or nedross. Dross does not crumble; it is rock to trust, grain pure throughout. Nedross rock cannot be trusted, even if it looks solid and pure in grain: It fails. It is—” he paused, searching, “not truth.”

Ker felt this as another blow. “I am not lying,” he said.

“The words you speak are not whole,” the dwarf said. “You know more you do not say.”

His mother shifted slightly; the dwarf holding her said something that sounded like rocks grinding and the one facing Ker nodded. Then he spoke again to Ker.

“This is who to you?”

“My mother,” Ker said. Did the rockfolk have mothers? Would he understand at all what mothers were to humans?

“Mother is one who birthed you?”

“Yes.” Much more than that, but that was the beginning.

The dwarf left Ker abruptly to the hold of the others and went to his mother. Ker started to move, but the ones holding him tightened their grip. It was like being held by rock.

“No smell of dragonspawn,” the dwarf said, facing Ker’s mother. His hands were clasped behind his back, near the handle of the dagger thrust through his belt. His voice was slightly softer, speaking to her. “You never touched this thing… but you know something. What do you know?”

“I don’t know what you speak of,” Ker’s mother said. “I saw a pretty piece of crystal that Tam said he had given Ker, and he wanted it back.”

“Tam. Tam is this one who picked up the stone and broke it? Tam is where?”

“In the vill—the village you call it. Ravenfield, we say,” Ker’s mother said. Her face, across the fire, was patched with moving light and shadow. Ker could not read her expression. Her voice sounded tense, even angry. “He is an important man in the village, is Tam Gerisson. And he drove us out—drove us out for nothing. For nothing, I say!”

“Your son did not say that.” The dwarf looked back at Ker, scowling. “I said you were not telling all you knew.” Then again, to his mother, “Whose words are nedross, your words or those of your son?”

“Ker is a good boy,” she said. “It is not for the young to condemn their elders or to bear tales of them.”

The dwarf’s clasped hands shifted, the fingers of one spreading and then folding again around the other. He spoke in his language, and a dwarf Ker had not noticed before moved into the firelight carrying wood, and put it on the fire. The fire leapt higher, giving more light. He turned back to Ker’s mother.

“So this is why he told us not more of this person Tam? Because in your folk the young must respect the old?”

Ker’s mother nodded. “The young are hasty; the young do not understand everything. So they could make trouble, not understanding, and they must not spread tales of wrongdoing, especially not to strangers. The Lady commands peace.”

“But you?”

“I am a widow, a mother, and of the same age as Tam Gerisson. I can judge the rightness of my own words, and I can bear the load of shame or sorrow if I misspeak.”

“And you say—” the dwarf prompted.

“I say that Tam planted falsely from the beginning. I say he tricked us, lured my son into plighting troth with his daughter, gave false gifts, lied and plotted to fashion an excuse to send me away.”

Ker felt his jaw drop in shock. He had never imagined his mother saying anything like this. “No!” he said. His mother ignored him and went on.

“Ker does not know this, but years ago I turned aside Tam’s offer of marriage. He was a lightfaring man, I thought, and I married Ker’s father instead, for he had been steady in his affection since we were children. Tam must have held anger against me, though he pretended friendship…”

In the brighter light of the fire her face looked intent, determined.

“Was he selfish, this Tam?” the dwarf asked. “Hungry for power among your people?”

“Not in seeming. We do not esteem selfish men,” his mother said.

Ker stirred. The dwarf whipped around as if he had seen that slight movement.

“What is it?”

“Granna Sofi said Tam became an Elder younger than others. He had the knowledge from his travels…” Ker said.

“So he did,” Ker’s mother said. “I had forgotten. His oldest children were scarce hip-high. It seemed reasonable, though, because he did know so much. He had often advised the Elders.”

“And your husband?”

“He tended the sheep of our people,” she said. “He died out on the hills in a storm. He fell and hit his head on a rock.”

“Tam had just become an Elder,” Ker said. If his mother was telling all about Tam, he had no reason not to tell what he remembered. “He came to tell us the news, and he offered friendship. He said I would be like a son to him, and he a father to me.”

“He said he would not hold against me that earlier refusal,” Ker’s mother said. “He said he would care for me as for a sister. After that, he taught Ker as his own son in the lore of field and woods.”

“Not sheep?” the dwarf asked.

“He was not good with animals,” Ker’s mother said. “He did not like them, nor they him. Barin Torisson took over the village sheep herd, and Ker learned the arts of planting and harvest. I gave his father’s shepherd’s crook to Barin for an extra share of wool.”

“And for this Tam gave what?”

“We shared the village harvest. Tam never failed to bring our full measure of grain.” Ker saw the sparkle of tears in his mother’s eyes, and her head dropped suddenly. “He must have held that anger close, so long… I was afraid, at first, but then all seemed well, until Ker and Tam’s daughter saw each other.”

“Saw—?”

“As man and woman, not child and child, sister and brother,” his mother explained. Ker had not thought about Lin for hours in the shock of leaving. Now he let his mind wander back to those first hours in which he had seen her truly, not as one of the gaggle of village girls, not as Tam’s daughter, but as herself. An individual. A person someone might desire and marry and live with. Suddenly she had seemed wreathed in light, set apart from the others. And on that same day she had looked at him, recognized him as himself. While he still stood, staring, amazed at what was happening, she had spoken his name, Ker, and it had reverberated through his whole body.

Everyone knew marriage meant joining a family, a lineage, an inheritance of body and mind and soul. But beyond that was the delight of a pairing that worked—fit neatly in all respects as in body. Mere liking was never enough—for as the Elders said, in the spring of youth all maids liked all men and all men liked all maids—but desired in addition to the other criteria.

“The flower of love is the children thereof, but the fruit is peace, harmony, contentment in the whole village,” his mother said to the dwarf, as she had told him often. A good marriage enriched everyone; a bad marriage impoverished everyone with the tensions it brought.

“Dwarflove is not like that.” The dwarf grinned suddenly, showing those square yellowish pegs. “It is that we find grain match, and of gems those most desired. Dwarflove is blending of the rock, as when fire mountains melt rock into liquid fire.”

Ker could not imagine that. The blending he understood was root into soil, or water into root: the growth of green things, flower and fruit.

“But no matter,” the dwarf said. It was as if he had never grinned. “It is not the time to speak of love, but of judgment and justice. It is our saying that you go to this man, this Tam Gerisson, and bring back those things of which we spoke, with or without his consent. Bring him also if you can.”

Ker felt a cold gripe in his belly. “I can’t,” he said. “We were banished. If I return, they will kill me. What good will that do?”

“If you do not return and fulfill this task,” the dwarf said. “We will kill you.” He fingered the ax handle in his belt.

“It is your rock,” Ker said. “Why can you not get it for yourself now that you know where it is?”

The dwarf glowered, then shook his head. “You humans! You know nothing of the matter, and yet you will give orders. The Singers say we are hasty, and men say we are greedy, but in all the world none are so hasty and greedy as humans.”

“I didn’t say—”

“Be quiet.” The dwarf’s expression stopped the words in Ker’s throat. He sat as still as he could, stone-still, and waited. Finally the dwarf heaved a gusty sigh, and shook his head. “It is not good for the Elders to mingle with humankind, so our wisest say. For where there is no mingling of blood in families, there comes mingling of blood in battle, and we would not begin a war without cause. For this reason, we ask humans to deal with humans, when needs must.”

“But why? What is the need? And why didn’t those other dwarves just come into the village and talk to Tam? Why did they vanish when he came near?”

“Were you not listening? Have you stones in your ears? You had seen them already: one human already, and I misdoubt they knew you were there until you rose from the water. We are not suited to seeing in water, we rockfolk. So one had seen, but there was no need for two to see. And you had the scent of dragonspawn on you—”

“Dragonspawn… you said that before, but you said rocks—”

The dwarf muttered what must have been a curse from the tone. “The scent of what we seek, I mean. Have you no words that mean different things—is there not a food you call dragoncake?

“Yes…” Ker remembered the village dragoncake, centerpiece of Midwinter Feast. “But—I was in the water. Water washes off scent—”

“Not this scent, not to our noses. Touch it but once, and you bear that scent to the end of your days. Faint, yes, if it is but once, and yet it marks the one who touches it forever.”

Ker shuddered. The dwarf nodded.

“You see, now, why this matters. It is worse than that, for the one who handles such carelessly for long, and someone who desires many… they are ill luck for those who do not know how to master them.”

“I thought at first,” Ker said, “that it was some kind of egg. That it might hatch—” Even now he wouldn’t mention Tam’s comment about dwarfwives laying eggs.

“Men!” The dwarf spat into the fire and a green flame shot up. “Can you do nothing but think of that which should not be spoken and bellow it aloud? Be quiet, now.”

Again Ker sat silently while the dwarf paced back and forth between him and the fire.

“It is ill, very ill, to speak of some things outside the fortresses of stone,” the dwarf said finally. His voice was softer, still gruff but almost pleading. “It will be worse for you and your mother and every one of us, if the wrong ears hear certain things, or the wind carries the tale to certain lands I will not name. You must trust me in this. In time, perhaps, you will know of what I dare not speak. Now—now you must retrieve those stones, to the last splinter, and bring them to us, before… before trouble comes.”

“They were eggs, weren’t they?” Ker said, hardly above a breath in loudness.

The dwarf threw up his hands. “O powers of earth! Save me from this insanity!” He leaned close to Ker then, his strong-smelling breath hot on Ker’s face, and murmured into his ear. “Yes, fool, they are eggs. Dragon’s eggs. And full of dragonspawn, as your dreams tried to convey. Every crystal splinter holds one, and every unbroken splinter can transform into a dragon if nothing stops it. A hundred, two hundred, a thousand dragons from one egg, do you understand? Those eggs were a thousand and three years old, given into the care of my great-great-uncle straight from the mouth of the dragon himself—”

“Males lay eggs?” Ker asked in a normal voice, forgetting in his curiosity the need for quiet. Quick as a snake’s tongue, the dwarf clouted him across the head. He had his dagger in his other hand; he had moved so quickly Ker had not seen him draw it.

“Fool! Idiot! Be quiet before you get us all killed.” He sat back on his heels, then twisted to look at Ker’s mother. “Madam, speak to your son! If you have any of the proper powers of a mother make him be silent—”

“Ker, please,” his mother said. “Please just listen.”

Ker nodded, and the dwarf heaved another sigh before going on. “We must be more careful,” he said. In his own tongue he spoke to the others, and three of the dwarves trotted away from the fire, up toward the trail. Then he turned back to Ker. “Man, if you try to run I will kill you myself with great gladness and your mother’s heart will be reft in twain.”

“I will not run,” Ker said. “I would not leave her.”

“Thanks be for that,” the dwarf said. The dwarves holding Ker let go his arms and walked away; he could not hear their footsteps, and once they passed beyond the bright firelight, they disappeared into the darkness. The remaining dwarf watched Ker, and ran his thumb along the side of his dagger with an unmistakable intent. For a time there was no sound but the crackle and hiss of the fire as it burnt lower, and then the dwarf spoke in a low voice.

“It is a trust, a trust between the firefolk of the mountains and my folk of the rocks. No land could sustain all the firefolk that might be born if they all came hatchlings from the egg, and nothing now in the world can prey upon the great ones, do you understand?”

Ker nodded without speaking. He did not understand what the dwarf meant by all this, but he did understand that the dwarf’s patience had worn to nothing, and the dagger blade, naked in the dwarf’s hand, glinted in the light that ran blood-red along it.

“For ages of ages, we rockfolk have had this trust, and for ages of ages the firefolk have not numbered more than the land could sustain. Some say of us—the Treesingers would say of us—that we and the firefolk are one in power-lust and greed, but this is not so. The hatchlings, aye: the young of every race are hasty and quick to grab and snatch. Human younglings, I have no doubt, run about and take more than they can use.” He turned back to Ker’s mother. “Is it not so, mother of a man?”

“It is so,” she said.

“Age brings long sight and steady thought,” the dwarf said. “The firefolk live long—even longer than we rockfolk, as long as the windfolk perhaps—and the firefolk in their age hold mountains in their care, mountains and valleys and the lands around. They have no wish to despoil what they love.”

Ker opened his mouth to say what he knew of dragonkind, but the look on the dwarf’s face stopped him. He wanted to say: But they are wicked, greedy, vicious; they are misers who heap up stolen treasure; they prey on travelers. Like dwarves. He did not say it.

“Long ago they made pacts with us rockfolk, for we know the ways of stone as they know the ways of fire, and between us great magics wrought protection for both their younglings and the world. Stone only can stand against such fire; only rockfolk can withstand the pressure of their desire to be free. They enter the bodies of those who touch them, bringing the fire of their ancestors but no wisdom, for they are young and full of foolish ambition. They grow, feeding on their host’s body and spirit, until the host is consumed and all but dragonet itself: greedy for power and wealth, proud and lustful.”

“I had dreams,” Ker said. “Something trapped in the crystal. When I woke up I saw a blue flame, a shape, dancing, and then the banked coals went cold.”

“And you touched it with bare hands—”

“It felt cold.”

“It found no host in you. Perhaps in truth you are drossin, as the rockfolk are, for the spawn cannot take a drossin host without its consent. Yet from what you say, one or more found a host in this Tam. You say his face was red, and his touch hot: This is indeed the way humankind reacts when filled with dragonspawn.”

“So it’s… eating him?” Ker’s gut twisted as he thought of it. Would it be like maggots that sometimes infested the sheep?

“Not exactly. Changing him. When it’s grown as far as that host permits, it moves to another. To another of the same household, often. This man has many children?”

“It would go into children?”

“Indeed. For it takes time and more time to mature to its next stage.”

Lin. Whatever was in Tam would get into Lin, would consume her, change her. Ker forgot his earlier concern, that she had inherited her father’s clenched fist. It was not Tam; it was the dragonspawn inside him, and Lin—he could think only of Lin, his Lin, corrupted and consumed by dragonspawn.

“I have to go,” he said abruptly, and stood. The dwarf swung a massive fist and knocked him down with a blow to the chest.

“Stay. I am not finished.”

“You want me to go. I want to go.” Ker could feel his heart pounding. “I have to save her—”

“Save who?”

“Lin. My—Tam’s daughter—the girl I was to marry—”

“Ker, no!” That was his mother, across the fire. “She may already—”

“It doesn’t matter. I have to—”

“You have to find and return the stones and fragments,” the dwarf said. “That is what you must do. Anyone already harboring a dragonspawn is beyond your power. Only a dragon can deal with such a one.”

“But if she isn’t—” Ker could hear his voice rising like a girl’s.

“Take her away, if you can. But I do not think you can.” The dwarf shook his head.

“If they do not kill me first, I will,” Ker said.

“If you rush in to save a girl, they will kill you,” the dwarf said. His voice now held amusement. “By Sertig’s hammer, I find myself where you were but an hour agone. You cannot go without being killed—not in this mood—so you must not go until you see sense.”

“I won’t rush in,” Ker said. “I’ll be careful.”

“And why do you now think being careful will work, while before you did not?”

Ker could not answer that, but an idea came to him. “If you would show me how to do that—what the others did—to not be seen, then I could get in and out and no one would know.”

“It is not something for humans to learn,” the dwarf said. “It is born in us. But perhaps we can help without that.” He pulled from his pocket a gray cloth about the size his mother draped over the dough trough. “This is not a way to be unseen, but a way to be unnoticed, if someone moves quietly and quickly. I do not know if it will work on you, but we shall see.”

He draped it on Ker’s head; for an instant the fire seemed to blur, then his vision cleared. The dwarf leaned close. “Get up and walk around the fire, very quietly, until you are near your mother. Say nothing. When you are beside her, speak to her.”

Ker stood; he was stiff from sitting so long, but he moved as quietly as possible. When he looked at his mother, she was looking where he had been, not at him. He spoke, then, and her head turned sharply. “Ker! I didn’t see you move! Are you leaving, then?”

“Yes—very soon, now.” He looked back at the dwarf.

“It is only deception, and not as strong on you as on us; I could see you easily. But then, I knew about it. Stay close to hedges and thickets, cast no shadows into someone’s eyes, and you may pass unseen.” Or may not, the dwarf’s expression said. “Rest a little,” the dwarf said. “You will need your rest.” That, as if he and his fellows had not broken Ker’s sleep in the first place. But under that commanding gaze, Ker lay down. When the dwarf shook him awake, dawn was gray to the east. “You had better go now,” the dwarf said. “Take this—” He handed Ker a flattened lump. “It is food, and will give you strength. And whatever you do, do not trust one who might have the dragonspawn already, no matter who it is.”

The journey back went swiftly, for it was mostly downhill and Ker had no burden to carry. The dwarf’s food brought him fully awake with the first bite and lent speed to his feet.

He moved cautiously as he came into the vill’s pasturelands.

No one watched the cattle grazing in the upper pasture; Ker knew where the herdsmen rested, and no herdsmen lay there. No one watched the sheep in their meadow; half had strayed into the hedge where the rustvine grew, which no shepherd would allow, for the thorns that tangled the fleece. Ker wondered at that, for it meant the shepherd had been away for hours. He took the sheep’s path to the stream, to the shelving bank where the sheep drank. Here the water swirled in, clean and clear, but there was no ford and no path on the far side.

The water cooled his feet, and he waded upstream to the women’s bathing pool, alert for voices, half-hoping he would find Lin bathing alone and could speak to her. No voices. He came out into a little glade, the grass dry underfoot, and followed the women’s path back to the village. He saw no one, heard no one, until he was very close, close enough to see through the fringe of vines at the wood’s edge. The blackened ruin of his mother’s house, burnt to ash and scorched stone hearth, lay between him and the rest of the village. It still stank of the burning.

Now he could hear voices, many voices and one angry voice louder than them all. He could see Tam in the middle of the square, yelling, and the other adults talking. The men should have been in the fields at this time of day, and the women in houses and gardens, or at the well, but all the people seemed to be there milling about. Ker watched, trying to hear what they said, but he could not. He wondered what had happened.

“You have to!” Tam yelled louder than before. “I know more! I have power!” He raised a fist.

Ker edged around one house and then another, working his way toward Tam’s. If they were all in the meeting arguing, perhaps he could get in and out with the eggs before someone saw him. At the corner of Granna Sofi’s garden, he looked across at Tam’s house. Its only door faced the square, but two windows looked out on this side. He had only to cross the garden with its clusters of pie plant and redroot, and climb in through the window. If no one was inside.

He dared not look to see if Tam’s family were all in the square; he was too close. Even with the dwarf’s cloth, someone might notice him. He could see safely out of Granna Sofi’s windows though, and she had a back door. He eased through it, blinking as his eyes adjusted to the darker room, pulled off the cloth, and took two steps toward the front of the house before he realized that Granna Sofi was there staring at him, her mouth open. She lay on a narrow bed, propped on pillows.

“You…” she breathed in her quavery old woman’s voice.

“Please,” Ker said, not even sure what he was asking. Don’t raise an alarm. Don’t be afraid. Don’t turn your back on me.

“You came back,” she said. Her voice rasped.

“Yes. I have to do something.”

“You said something was wrong with Tam,” she said. He looked more closely at her, with the way she lay, with the shape of her legs and the color of her skin.

“Granna Sofi, what is it?”

“You were right,” she said. “He has changed. He has become something else.”

“I know. I have to stop it—”

“You cannot stop it. He will kill you. He killed me because I spoke against him.”

“But—” But you’re alive, he thought, even as her eyes sagged shut and her last breath rattled free of her ribs. He saw then that her legs were broken, that great bruises marred her arms. Ker made the signs to send her spirit away in peace, and looked around for the necessary herbs. There they were, wrapped in a twist of sourgrass, as if the old woman had known she was going to die that day. Perhaps she had. He shivered, and laid the herbs on her eyes and mouth, at her head and feet.

When he looked out her front window, he could see Tam clearly, the red sun-burnt face and arms, the fierce expression on his face. He could feel the waves of heat that came off the square. Tam’s wife, Ila, stood beside him, and she too looked ruddy under the sun, her yellow hair blazing with light. Around them at a little distance stood the others of the town, children at the back, peering between the adults.

It must be now. He hurried out Granna Sofi’s back door, and quickly stepped across the first row of plants, then the second, and then he was flattened against the wall of Tam’s house. He listened a long moment, hearing nothing from within. Tam continued to harangue the villagers from the square. Ker tried not to listen, as he would have tried not to swallow filth, but some words leaked through his ears anyway.

He must do it. He must enter the house as a thief, and as a thief he must steal away Tam’s treasure, both the dragon’s eggs and the daughter. He turned and climbed in through the low window. As before, his eyes took a moment to adjust to the dimness. He reached for the cloth to take it off, and realized he’d left it in Granna Sofi’s house. He moved aside from the window and stumbled against a bench, and then in an instant he was wrapped in someone’s arms and a hot mouth pressed against his, and the voice he had long dreamed of said, “Oh… you came back…”

Lin. He freed his mouth and said, “Lin. I have to do something.”

“Yes—you have to kiss me. Oh, Ker, I’ve been so unhappy—” She clung to him and he could feel every sweet curve of her body. They had never been this close; he had dreamed of being this close. “Take me away, Ker; take me away with you! I want you, I want you forever.”

He had never imagined that she would choose him over her father’s will. He had expected to have to argue with her, persuade her.

“I will,” he said. “But first I have to do something. Help me, and then we’ll go—”

“No, let’s go now,” she said, dragging him toward the window.

“No, Lin, it’s important—” He pulled back far enough to see her clearly. Lin with her yellow hair inherited from her mother, her clear eyes, her creamy skin… now flushed with passion, with love for him.

“What, then?” she said, clearly impatient. “If Da finds you here, he’ll kill you—maybe both of us. We have to go—”

“In a moment. Lin, where does he keep the rock eggs, the ones with the pretties—”

“You’re going to steal his pretties?” Her voice rose, then hushed quickly, and she grinned at him. “What a sweet vengeance, Ker. I hardly dared think you could think of that—”

“Under the hearthstone?” he asked, turning toward it. The dragon had told him he would feel the pull of the dragonspawn, but all he felt now was Lin’s nearness and his own body’s response.

“Some of them,” she said. “But not all—” And with a gesture very unlike the girl he’d known, she pulled open her bodice to show him the purplish crystal spike hung from a thong around her neck, nestling between her breasts. His heart faltered, then raced.

“Lin, no! Take it off! It will hurt you!”

“Take it off? I will not! Da gave it to me, to make up for sending you away. It’s the one you had; I’ll never take it off.”

“But Lin, they’re dangerous!”

“Ker, don’t be silly. It’s a rock, a pretty rock. How can it be dangerous? The only dangerous thing here is Da, if he finds us. Here—I’ll show you the others—” And she lifted the massive hearthstone as easily as Ker would have lifted a hoe, and scooped up two whole egg-shaped rocks, and a handful of shards. “This should be enough.”

“We have to get them all,” Ker said, and his own voice sounded strange to him. Where had Tam found another egg? He looked around and took a cloth from a hook near the fireplace. “Here—put them in this. We shouldn’t touch them.”

“They don’t burn,” Lin said, but she gave him what she held, then reached down for the other shards. As she did, the banked fire went out with a last hiss, and Ker saw the glow of her skin against the dark hole, and all at once her hand seemed clawlike, the nails talons. When she looked up at him, his stomach clenched at the expression on her face… exultant, hungry, eager…

“Is that all?” Ker asked. “Are you sure?”

“My father was right,” Lin said with a giggle that froze his heart. “You are a greedy thief, aren’t you?”

He could say nothing. He was robbing her father, though it was not greed, and he had no way to explain it. Not to the girl whose skin shone in the dim room. He wanted to tell her everything, but the dwarf’s final warning stopped his tongue. That and his fear.

“Come now,” Lin said, moving to the window. “I don’t mind if you’re greedy. I’m used to that in a man. I know you’ll provide for me—”

“Lin—” What could he say? What he had most feared had happened already; he could not prevent it; he had come too late. He could not go with her, wherever she was going; he could not stay here.

“Come on, Ker,” she said, reaching back to grasp his arm and tug at him. “We need to leave now. We can find a place later, and—”

He moved, hardly aware of moving, following her out through the window, across the garden again, behind Granna Sofi’s house toward the next garden, the next house. Behind them the crowd in the square gave a concerted gasp. Lin did not look around, but Ker did.

Above the square hung a shadow of light, light condensed into form, form overwhelming light. The shape writhed, growing until it filled the air above the square, brightening more and more. Ker paused, terrified but fascinated. What could it be? What was Tam doing? Beneath that light, Tam looked up, and the other villagers edged away, pushing at the children behind them.

“Ker!” Lin’s voice, from the edge of the village, near the ashes of what had been his house. “Come quickly! Before Da sees us!”

Light squirmed in the air; shifting colors flowed over the crowd, then faded. Tam’s face paled; his mouth opened; his hands spread as if to push the light away. Heat pressed down, heavy, inexorable. Something crackled; Ker looked across the crowd and saw a ribbon of flame leap up the thatch of Othrin’s house and spread. Those nearest turned, opened their mouths to start a warning. With a roar two other houses burst into flame, then a third. People screamed; Ker could see their mouths open, but only the roar of the fires sounded in his ears.

Pain stung his hands. He looked down and saw the cloth wrapping of his burden browning like toast over coals.

He ran. He ran without thought, without plan, away from the heat, away from the light, straight into the woods on no path at all, blundering into trees and stumbling over briars until he fell headlong into the stream. Steam hissed away from his burden; the blackened cloth fell to pieces. His hands opened; water flowed between his fingers, cooling, soothing. Under the water he could see the stones: two whole, one broken, a heap of shards.

Behind him in the village fire raged; he could hear the roar, the crackling; he could hear screams. Acrid smoke spread through the trees. Overhead, thunder boomed in the cloudless sky; lighter light departed. Shaking, Ker got to his feet in the shallow water, took off his shirt, and wrapped his scorched hands, then fished the stones and pieces out of the slow current and waded downstream to look for a place to climb out.

When he came around a turn of the stream, Lin stood on the ford waiting for him. She looked flushed and lovely, her hair curling around her shoulders, her body the shape of every man’s dream. She smiled at him.

“We don’t have to worry about Da now,” she said. “We can go back. You can be an Elder—”

“No,” Ker said.

“Well, then, we can go somewhere else. With Da’s pretties we’ll have enough to start a new place—” A little breeze blew a lock of shining hair across her face; she tossed it back, the gesture he remembered from their childhood.

“No,” Ker said.

“You’re not running away,” she said. The smile changed, reshaped into a mask of anger. “Don’t think you can take what’s mine and run away from me, leave me again!” Her hand reached for the crystal she wore, and he could see in her all that he had seen in her father. “Give them back then, thief!”

The words echoed, throbbing in air that once again thickened into light incarnate. He had a momentary image of Lin consumed in light, rising into its maw.

She was gone. The strange light was gone. On the ford stood a man dressed in such finery as Ker had never seen or imagined: brilliant colors, glossy fabrics, feathers and lace… he did not even have the words to say what he saw. The man stood in a shaft of brilliant sunlight that pierced the overarching trees, and the smoke filtering through the trees flowed around him.

“I believe,” the man said, “you have something of mine.”

Ker tightened his grip on his bundle. “It belongs to the rockfolk,” Ker said. “I do not know you.”

“To the rockfolk.” A dry chuckle, thornbush scraping on stone. “I suppose that is one way of saying it. Are you then returning it, or are you the thief she called you?”

“I am not a thief,” Ker said. “I am taking it back to them.”

The man stared at him until Ker coughed on the smoke blowing through the trees, and then the man shrugged and blew away, as if he had been smoke himself. Ker struggled out of the water, and made his way up the trail, coughing now and then as the smoke eddied past him.

Over the first rise, the same man stood by the path, leaning on a tree. “You might fare better if you had a horse,” he said.

“I have never had a horse,” Ker said.

“A walking stick, then,” the man said, and held out a trimmed length of wood with the bark still on. “You have a long way to go.”

“It is ill luck to take gifts of strangers,” Ker said.

“It is ill luck to refuse gifts of dragons,” the man said, and as before he blew away… but this time into the thickening of light, which condensed into a shape the size of a hill. Green as the man’s coat on the back, and yellow as the man’s shirt underneath, clothed in shining scales that shimmered from one color to another. Ker gulped, swallowed, and stood still.

“Mortals,” said the dragon. The dragon was not looking at Ker, but up into the air as if talking to it.

Ker took a step forward up the trail, and the dragon’s great eye rolled toward him. He stopped.

“You interest me,” the dragon said. A long flame-colored tongue flicked out of its mouth and touched Ker on the forehead; he felt it as a bee sting, hot and then sore. “I taste my children on you, but not in you. I taste dwarf on you. Perhaps you tell the truth?”

“I—I am,” Ker said. Sweat rolled down his face; heat came off the dragon as off a rock wall on which the sun has lain all day. “They sent me to bring these back—” He shifted the burden in his hands.

“It is… difficult,” the dragon said. “They do belong… there.” The dragon sighed, and the grass before it withered and turned brown at the edges. For a moment the dragon’s eye looked down its snout, then it lifted its head. “Lowland life is so fragile,” it said, as if to itself. Then to Ker: “Approach me.”

With the dragon’s eye on him, he could not disobey. He took one step after another, until the heat beat against his face and body.

“What do your people say of dragons?” the dragon asked.

It was impossible to lie. “My people say dragons are wise,” Ker said. “And greedy, treacherous, and cruel.”

“My people say humans are stupid,” the dragon said. “And greedy, treacherous, and cruel. Which is better if one must be cruel: stupid and cruel, or wise and cruel?”

In the worst of the nightmares, Ker had never dreamt of holding a conversation with a dragon. “Wisdom is good,” he said, trying for caution.

“Wisdom alone is useless,” the dragon said. “Wisdom without power is wind without air… it can do nothing of itself.” Ker said nothing; he could think of nothing to say. The dragon twitched his head. “And power without wisdom is fatal. Power without wisdom is a mad bull running through the house.” The dragon focused both eyes on Ker. “A fool should have no power, lest he bring ruin with him, but a wise man must have power, lest his wisdom die without issue. So which are you, mortal: fool or wise man?”

Something more than his own life hung on his answer, Ker knew, but not what it was. “I try to be good,” he said.

The dragon vented flame from its nostrils, over its head. “Good! Evil! Words for children to use. Can fools ever bring good, or true wisdom do evil? No, no, little man. You must choose: Are you fool or wise man?”

“Anyone would choose to be wise, but it is not possible to choose,” Ker said. “Some are born unable to become wise.”

Something rattled off to his right; Ker glanced that way and saw the tip of the dragon’s tail slithering across its vast hind leg.

“You interest me again,” the dragon said. “So you would choose to be wise if you could be wise?”

“Of course,” Ker said.

“And of what does wisdom consist?” the dragon asked.

Ker could think of no answer for that. He knew he was not wise; how then could he know what wisdom was? Finally he said, “Only the wise know.”

“Does beauty know what beauty is?” the dragon asked. “Does water know wetness, or stone hardness?” Its head tilted so that one great eye was higher than the other, and both looked cross-eyed down its snout at Ker. His mouth went even dryer than before. Scaled eyelids slid up over the dragon’s eyes for a moment and dropped back down, leaving that penetrating gaze even clearer than before. Ker’s stomach twisted; eyelids should not move like that. “Surely not,” the dragon said, hissing slightly. “Nor the blue of the sky know its blueness, nor the green of grass its greenness.”

A throbbing silence followed; Ker could find nothing to say. He glanced around, trying to think of something, anything, that would free him from the dragon’s gaze, and saw that its tail now lay between him and the trail back, a narrow but steep ridge. He was trapped in the dragon’s circle.

“I will tell you,” the dragon said finally, “what wisdom is, if you will promise to become wise.”

“How can I promise that?” Ker blurted in a panic. Sweat ran down his ribs, and dried in the heat of the dragon’s breath.

“Small beings can have small wisdom,” the dragon said. “And small wise beings are better than small fools. Listen: Wisdom is caring for afterwards.”

“Caring for afterwards…?” Ker repeated this without understanding.

“After action, afterwards,” the dragon said. “Choose the afterwards first, then the action. Fools choose action first.”

Ker opened his mouth to say that only fortune-tellers could know what would happen, but fear stopped him: Would he really argue with a dragon while trapped in its circle?”

The dragon’s snout edged closer, nudged him. He staggered back: A dragon’s nudge was like a blow from a strong man. Or a dwarf.

“You see,” the dragon murmured. “You do know.”

He didn’t know. He didn’t know anything except that he was surrounded by large lumps and ridges of dragon and too afraid to shake or fall down. He closed his eyes, expecting searing flame or rending teeth, and tried to think of the village as it had been, before Tam found those terrible eggs… of Lin before she had been invaded… of his mother, who now waited out on the hills in a hollow with a spring and a handful of rockfolk.

Cool air swirled around him, rose to a gale of dust and leaves, then stilled. He opened his eyes. No dragon. No strange light in the air. He blinked. A streak of dead grass, scorched, where the dragon had breathed that tongue of fire… and new grass, growing quick as a flame, brilliant green against the charred ground. At his feet lay the walking stick he had refused before, now sprouting incongruous flowers and leaves.

Ker looked up and around and saw nothing of the dragon, but he had seen nothing of the dragon before. Cautiously, he picked up the stick in his free hand. At once, strength flowed back into his limbs. He felt rested, strong, as if he had just come from a full night’s sleep and a full meal. The scent of those flowers filled his nose. He took a step and stared as the land blurred around him, reappearing when he put that foot down. A league, two leagues, had fled behind him. Already he could see the hill where his mother waited with the rockfolk.

One more step and he was there, standing above the dell and looking down into it with eyes that saw through leaves and wood to where his mother sat knitting, while the rockfolk snored. The ones who should have been watching the trail slumped near it, also snoring. The little camp looked orderly and peaceful; someone had put their scattered belongings back into the packs. Probably his mother; he could not imagine the dwarves being so helpful. Somewhere a bird called, and another answered. Ker looked at the walking stick. Flowers and leaves had disappeared, leaving it bark-covered once more.

Ker came carefully down the slope into camp; his mother looked up and her face brightened but she said nothing.

“I’m back,” he said.

“What happened?”

He did not know how to tell her; he was not sure exactly what had happened.

“Why are they sleeping?” he asked instead. His mother shrugged.

“I know not. Only that at noon the light changed and they all fell into sleep. I would have slept, but their snores were too loud and I was worried… did you bring Lin?”

“No.” Ker leaned the walking stick against a tree; the tree’s foliage thickened. His mother stared at him.

“What happened? What is that? How did you come so soon?”

“I don’t understand,” Ker said. “It was a dragon—” He could say no more; exhaustion fell on him like a sack of wet grain, and he slumped to the ground. In a moment, his mother was at his side. A long drink of water, a hunk of bread smeared with jam, and he struggled up again to sit with his back against a tree. She handed him his spare shirt, and he put it on. He tried to tell her everything, but how could he say what he did not understand?

The rockfolk roused suddenly, their snores cut off in an instant. Their eyes opened; they sat up and stared at him.

“Why are you here?” asked the leader. “Why did you come back before you had finished?”

“I brought you what you asked for,” Ker said. He nudged the wrapped bundle with his foot.

“You could not have gone so far so fast—” the dwarf broke off, staring now at the bundle. He muttered in his own language, and two of the others approached, one drawing a thick leather bag from his pack and opening its mouth. The first unwrapped the bundle gingerly, and revealed the same egg-shaped rocks, the same shards. He reached out, touched them, turned them over. Then he glared at Ker. “How did you do this?”

“Do what?”

“They’re dead. They’re all dead. What did you do to them?”

“I did nothing,” Ker said. He couldn’t see any difference in the rocks and shards, but the dwarves clearly did.

“These can’t be the same… you could not have traveled so fast…”

“It was the dragon,” Ker said. They all stared at him now. “It—gave me a walking stick. It helped me.”

Now they stared at the walking stick, and the thick growth of new leaves on the tree overhead.

“You talked to a dragon and it helped you? It brought you eggs to carry?”

“No.” His head ached now, sudden as if someone had hit him again. “Let me tell you—”

“Go ahead.”

He told it as well as he could and they listened without interruption, though some of them muttered softly in their own tongue. When he finished, with “And then you woke up,” the questions began. What was the dragon’s name, and how big, and what color, and what had it done with Tam and the villagers and Lin? Ker said “I don’t know” over and over.

“You cannot know so little,” the dwarf said. “You were there! You say you saw these things, and yet—”

“Don’t bully him,” his mother said. “You’re as bad as Tam, you lot.” She glowered at them, and to Ker’s surprise they gave way. “What would he know of dragons? Do you think they give their names away to anyone?”

“Rarely,” drawled a new voice. Ker twisted around to see the same elegant man lounging on the slope above, a stalk of sweetgrass in his mouth. The dwarves drew into a huddle, eyes wide. The man lifted one shapely eyebrow. “Frightened, stonebrethren? Lost something? It would have been wise, would it not, to have told me before I heard it from others? Before I had to reveal myself, to undo the harm that came from that loss?”

One of the dwarves burst into speech in their tongue, but the man held up a hand. “Be courteous; these human folk have not your language nor mine. Speak as they can hear.”

“We weren’t sure,” the dwarf said. “Not at first. We thought—”

“You hoped you could retrieve what you lost before I learned of it, is that not true?”

“Yes.” The dwarf scuffed one boot against another.

“So this human—this idiot, this fool, I believe you called him—has proved more wise than you, has he not? He, not you, retrieved the lost. You sent him to do it, knowing it was perilous—”

“It was his fault in the first place,” muttered one of the dwarves.

“You accuse him of thievery?” the man said. “You think he slit the carrybag and filched the eggs in the first place?”

“Well… no. Probably not.” The dwarf looked down, hunching his shoulders.

“You know they seek life,” the man said. “My kind always do. Whoever carried them grew careless, I have no doubt: drank deep and slept, as you slept today, or set the carrybag on sharp rock, and so they fell free, to be found by something or someone they could use.” He sighed. “I should remember that ages are long for you, stonebrethren, and a trust passed from generation to generation can be a trust weakened.”

“We didn’t mean—” began the first dwarf, but his voice trailed away as the man looked at him.

“Intentions…” the man said slowly. Then he looked at Ker’s mother. “Madam, what does a mother say about intentions?”

“Meaning to never mended a wall,” Ker’s mother said. “Not meaning to drop it never patched a pitcher.”

“So wise a lady,” the man said. “This must be your son.” Now he looked at Ker, and it seemed that behind his mild brown eyes red flames danced.

“He’s a good boy,” she said.

“He’s an interesting man,” the man said, in a tone of mild correction. “He may become wise one day. We shall see.” Now he looked at Ker. “What of you? What do you see in all this?”

Ker’s throat tightened, but he forced words past the tightness. “You are not a man,” he said.

That elegant figure laughed. “True and true: what then, am I?”

“A dragon.”

“Perhaps. Perhaps merely the shape a dragon sends to talk to those who cannot bear the sight of dragons. For if the shape be the thing, then this shape of man cannot be a dragon, nor—” The man was gone; words hung in the air as the light condensed once more and a very visible dragon sprawled on the trail above, its head lying aslant on the slope to the dell. “Nor can this be a man’s shape. But if some essence, not the shape, be the thing, then either the man’s shape or some other could be dragon.”

“Lord dragon,” one of the dwarves said, coming forward past Ker. Ker noticed that he was paler than usual. “If you permit us—”

“I do not,” said the dragon. “Be still, rockbrethren; we will talk hereafter.” There was in that a chill threat. Ker and the dwarf both shivered, but the dragon was looking at Ker. “You remember we talked of wisdom… what would a wise being say of these who lost somewhat of value held in trust and did not warn the owner that it was lost?”

“You ask me to judge them?” Ker said. He glanced at the dwarves, now standing motionless as if the command to be still had turned them to stone.

“I ask your opinion only,” the dragon said. “I am capable of judgment; it is my gift.”

“I do not know the ways of rockfolk,” Ker began. The dragon’s eye kindled, and he went on hastily. “But these had cause to hate and distrust us—me and my mother—and instead they listened and did not harm us.”

“You bear their bruises on your face,” the dragon commented.

Ker shrugged. “I bear them no malice for it,” he said. “They were frightened; they thought I might have stolen those things they sought, and that danger would come of it.”

“They sent you into danger,” the dragon said.

“Yes, but—” The dwarves’ reasons now seemed like excuses, as he’d first thought. Even so he wanted no part of vengeance. “They did not force me; when I thought of Lin I wanted to go.”

“To save a friend.”

More than a friend, but he did not think the dragon would care for a correction. “Yes. And these dwarves were trying to make right what had gone wrong. They wanted to restore what was lost. I think they are honest, but too frightened—of you, I suppose—”

“Oh, yes, I am frightening…” The dragon rolled its head and inspected its own length. A cloud of steam gushed from its mouth, warm and moist, smelling of baked apples. “And so fear is their excuse, is that what you would say? But you… you were not frightened enough to give me what you were not sure was mine. Are you then braver than the rockbrethren?”

“No,” Ker said instantly. “I’m—I was scared. I am scared. But I had to do it anyway.”

“Hmmmm.” That vibrated in the rocks beneath their feet; the trees trembled. “So, you make no judgment against them for the harm they did to you, by loosing such dangers on you and your people, and then by striking you, and then by sending you into danger?”

“I am not the judge,” Ker said. The dragon’s eyelids flipped up and back down again, and again Ker felt sick at his stomach.

“You are more clever than you seemed at first. Remember what wisdom is?”

“Care for afterwards,” Ker recited promptly.

“Yes… and have you a care for afterwards here? What about their afterwards?”

Ker looked at the dwarves. They all looked at him with an expression of resigned defeat.

“If I were the judge,” Ker said, “I would do no more than has already happened. They have been afraid to the marrow of their bones; they have suffered enough.”

“Would you trust them again?” the dragon asked, cocking its head to peer closely at Ker out of one eye.

“I would,” Ker said. His back felt cold; he glanced around to see that the fire had died down to glowing embers.

“Why?”

Ker shrugged. “I don’t know. They feel honest to me.”

“So in their afterwards they prosper as the result of their carelessness… will this make them less careless?” The dragon had propped its chin on one vast front claw.

“I do not know,” Ker said. “You asked what I thought.”

“So.” The dragon’s head lifted a little, and the warmth of its breath touched Ker. “Hear my judgment, rockbrethren. For your carelessness in a sworn trust, you shall lose the gems in these—” A lance of flame, accurate as a pointing finger, touched the rocks and shards; Ker hardly felt warmth as it struck past him. When he turned to look, the rocks and shards had vanished. “Yet I will trust that you continue to guard the other well, and make no demands of reparation. So tell your king. I will watch more closely, but that is all. And I will also watch how you deal with this human, whom you have to thank for my inclination to mercy.”

The dwarves threw themselves on the ground; the dragon withdrew into the fastnesses of air. They looked up when it had gone, and scrambled to their feet.

“We’ve you to thank,” their leader said. His mouth twisted, then he smiled. “Well, that’s fair, I suppose. And what do you want of us, then?”

“N-nothing,” Ker said. His knees felt shaky again.

“That won’t do,” the dwarf said. “Sertig knows we’re not as rulebound as our cousins of the Law, but no one can say the brothers are mean enough to take such a service as you did us and give no gifts in return. And it’s not for the dragon’s sake, either,” he said, glaring up at the leaf canopy overhead. “I need no dragon to teach me generosity.” A bubble of light rippled through the dell, and he paled but shook his head. “No, and again no. We’re in your debt, a debt we can’t pay, but we can gift you with what we have.” He looked around at the others. “Come now, lads, let’s get busy.”

Before Ker quite realized what they were about, the dwarves had picked up the bundles he and his mother had carried from the village the day before.

“Where was it you were going, ma’am?” he asked Ker’s mother.

“I—I have family in the hills west of here,” she said. “Swallowbank…”

“Swallowbank, yes. A difficult road, ma’am, and a hard three days’ journey, if you’ll pardon me saying so. Would you consent to travel an easier one?”

“I—” she looked at Ker. “I—I suppose so. What road?”

“Ours,” the dwarf said. He turned to Ker. “We will take you on our road, smooth and straight and safe underfoot and overhead, we will carry all your burdens, and we will set you down safe and rested in sight of Swallowbank with all that you desire,” he said. “If you will accept our gift.”

“I thought—maybe—with Tam gone, and the dragonspawn—we could go back,” Ker said. “Rebuild our village—” Surely they were not all dead, all the people he had known; surely the dragon would not have killed them all.

The dwarf shook his head. “No. I’m sorry, but what the dragon deals with cannot be changed. For all they are great healers in their way, they are also great destroyers. That land will not accept humans for a span of years; the dragon would have made sure of that. You must find a new place, and a new life.”

“Then—I accept your offer with thanks.” Ker picked up the walking stick, half-expecting to be dragged a league away with his first step, but it remained a bark-covered stick.

The dwarf led them back up the way Ker had come down with firewood, to a rock fence smoothed by falling water. The rock opened suddenly, like a door, and they passed into a dark tunnel, smooth all around. At once, the walking stick burst into cold flame, lighting the tunnel in blue radiance. Ker stared at it, but it did not burn his hand, so he held it firmly and walked on.